Allan

Exceptional Performance, and this is not the movie

Revisado: 07-06-20

Although every word of this book is a deeply disturbing (and depressing) meditation on death and mortality, it is such a masterwork of storytelling that I was in awe of it and unable to stop. I first read the book in 1988, and I remember now reading it with a flashlight under the covers after I was supposed to be asleep because in the last 200 pages you couldn't put it down. I also remember trying to explain to other kids the difference between the book and the movie. I thought then, and I still think now, a movie can't capture what King does. Although I think King matured and wrote more interesting books later, he was never better at the 'slowly leading you to a haunted house, then throwing you in and slamming the door' than some of the early ones like Pet Sematary. You'll think, for days, about the things that are just hinted at and not explained. Also you'll drive really carefully.
Pet Sematary is a true horror story. Many of the stories in pop culture around the idea of the “undead” are not. This is not a commentary on their quality, but the type of storytelling on display. Walking Dead, for example, has moments of horror early on, but very quickly defines itself as a survival drama. Because like many so called “horror” films, the antagonists are the other people. In true horror the antagonist is often the unknown.
Horror has sometimes been defined as humanity on the edge of a vast darkness or mystery. The Creed household with it’s electric light and familial comforts is just an outpost sitting against a vast unknown, deep within which resides something the Native Americans called the Wendigo. That this entity is ill-defined and unknowable adds to the horror that human understanding may not extend beyond the bounds of its own experience, which is life. The vast forest is death, and no one returns from there the same- not even from a short outing just to the nearby Pet Sematary- Ellie wonders what to do if her cat dies. Louis and Rachel argue about what to tell her to believe about death. Jud is still haunted by Timmy Baterman’s death but deep down wants to share the secret with Louis. Louis is also afraid to break the bad news to Ellie when her cat dies. . But most of all, he is afraid to break the bad news to himself, later on.
Structurally, something both movie versions don’t quite capture is the suspense of the 2nd half of the book. After Louis learns the truth of the burial ground with Church the cat, lets say, certain things become INEVITABLE and the suspense comes in the main character not admitting to himself what he is thinking about doing, out there in the deep dark forest. This book will not be a pleasant experience for most but it is a masterwork of storytelling and a thoughtful meditation on grief and letting go, and they'll never get it right in a movie. Also mad props to the performance by Michael C Hall who disappears in this role- I never thought of him once- though have seen him in about 100 hours of TV.

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Great continuation of the "14" story

Revisado: 07-06-20

The first book int he series, "14" was an unexpected gem for me because as an LA resident I felt like I knew all the characters and certainly the locale, and the deepening mystery of the discovery was great fun.
"The Fold" was another great entry and this follows it up. What I really appreciate about both The Fold and Terminus is that Clines knows instinctively that a sequel can broaden the world and show new ideas while still being rooted in the world of the original and reconnecting with it with some of the characters. In other words, It's not just the same thing again. In this one, we meet a crazy cult of doomsday mutants (yep) but he humanizes them in unexpected ways which makes it infinitely more interesting to read that if they were mindless clichè.
We learn more about the origins of "14" and get some crazy monster action, and collect more interesting characters. We also get the same narrator here- Ray Porter- and there is something to be said for continuing with the same voice as we continue the story.

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Great Characters

Revisado: 07-06-20

Excellent setup, interesting villain, and some great character work.
Koepp, famous screenwriter of some of your favorite movies, definitely knows how to setup a great story. I have read many stories with sort-of similar setups, but they are rarely rendered with such interesting characters. I think this is Koepp's first novel and I feel like this is the type of prose he has been dying to write after all that time stuck in the sparse format of the modern screenplay. which is, almost by law, devoid of any descriptions or internal information that can't be put into a picture. So unless there is voice-over you can't say what a character is thinking. If they're divorced, you can't tell the reader that, other than to show they have tan-line on the ring finger, or some such visual detail, unless the character says it.
So here Koepp is finally free to talk about what a character is thinking or their past interactions or feelings without having to allude to it. In this book the characters we do get to know are endlessly entertaining and we are intrigued and want more. The physical setup is quite good too and we do experience some great moments of discovery.
But that is my one complaint. The setup is so good in terms of both premise and character that it ends up feeling incomplete... to the degree that I strongly suspect it is. The end felt very much like page 55 in a 110 page screenplay where the character pulls off a big flambouyant attempt to fix the problem that instead makes it worse... after which a whole bunch of ever-worsening stuff happens forcing you to come up with a big crazy solution later on page 85 that's so-crazy-it-just-might-work. Right? I felt like we were missing that 2nd half here, as much as I enjoyed it.
Maybe this is the first part of a multi-book series? Which, if it is, I will immediately consume. This was the most enjoyable book I've heard in a few, so maybe it's the "leave them wanting more" thing.

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Good, but short and full of recording errors

Revisado: 07-24-14

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Interesting survey of some independent film directors and films. Worth the low price. Reminded me about a lot of films I'd forgotten about. Enjoyed it as a survey although not super in-depth. And, the recording is full of errors. Every few minutes there is a hard cut in the middle of a word as though this was spliced together out of tape by an amateur, and it seems like there are words or sentences cut out. I don't know how this got past QC.

What about Jessie Goodwin’s performance did you like?

The performance is perfectly listenable, although marred by the jarring recording/edit errors.

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Good book, terrible narration

Revisado: 07-10-14

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The performance should have been more conversational. It's robotic and patronizing while reading text that is very conversational. English is my first language. I don't need someone to read conversational text this carefully, over enunciating every speck of it. You're not defusing a bomb. Just read it.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Maybe this style of narration works for some people, but it almost wrecked the book for me. The performance is so robotic and over-enunciated that it comes off as patronizing and almost sarcastic. I almost stopped several times because I couldn't stand the performance. It was probably directed this way, which makes me wonder, does the director of this recording ever actually listen to people talk? Can he stand listening to this, and expect listeners to take numerous hours of this over-exaggerated insanity? Was this done on purpose?

Any additional comments?

Once I was sufficiently numbed to the performance and resigned to finish the book, the stories in it are actually quite good, and well worth it for those interested in directing.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

starts out great and then flops

Revisado: 08-01-11

This book has a fantastic, creepy-as-hell premise and the first half is great fun.... a hole full of corpses in New York, under the site of an ancient natural history museum, and here appears our friend Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI apparently gone rogue with interest in these ghastly things because of gigantic, hidden implications... nothing but fun and intrigue so far... But then in my opinion it shifts away from a great, creepy finale towards something slightly more convoluted, in a couple of twists that didn't seem necessary to me. Without spoilers I feel that the authors here asked you to accept a pretty large conceit about the antagonist that, in itself, could be the stuff of horror stories, but then they just nonchalantly shift away from this idea without bothering to explain much about it, or "go there" so to speak and move on to some other convoluted twists for some reason, as if they were afraid their original idea wasn't enough. If this was a movie it would just need one rewrite to be fantastic....

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One of their best books

Revisado: 08-01-11

I have read about 7 novels by Preston and Child, and I have to vehemently disagree with some of the negative reviews I have read of this book. While some reviewers have said "this feels like a movie" in a pejorative way, to me that is a strong point. It feels like a movie: the characters are very clear, they are well developed in lean, crisp strokes, the pace is fast, and the action strong. The story does a great job developing the characters through action, while pushing the story forward without slowing down much. A couple of characters from past books pop up here, and make brief reference to past events, and these said characters have matured and evolved just as you'd expect them to (referring to Eli Glinn and his buddy Garza from "Ice Limit." Having just read that one as well I was expecting Glinn to exert more control in this one). The set pieces are interesting and just like all of their stories, Gideon's Sword does have a some intriguing ideas in it. The protagonist is much more well developed than some of the previous ones I read in other books and the bad guy is fun. Gideon is a great character and it would be fun to see him in another story. As I stated at the beginning of this review, this is my 7th book by these guys and what it feels like is that the things they were doing in earlier books have sort of crystallized in this one, in a story that moves fast and gets better as it goes, and makes some of the earlier ones look like practice.

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among the best of King

Revisado: 06-13-11

This is among the best Stephen King books, in my opinion. A fairly sublime blend of magic and melancholy, its an exploration of the 1960s through several intertwining stories with a sort of lyrical sci-fi touch that doesn't disrupt its seriousness (it lightly brushes against the Dark Tower series). Theres a sort of nostalgia and pathos here that you'll remember long afterwards. The movie only covers about 20 % of this. HIGHLY recommend. Not horror, FYI.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

very cinematic. high tech meets pirate treasure.

Revisado: 06-13-11

This novel is centered around a real mystery in Nova Scotia called the Money Pit. The authors have done a great job fictionalizing this real phenom and asking what if some zillionaire with all the most high tech toys and dream-team crew attacked the problem. And then, what might the most awesome truth underneath the treasure actually be, in the most cinematic of circumstances. Well played, I say. My only complaint is that the inevitable "turning evil" of certain people is a touch too predictable, sudden, and extreme. But the thought they have put into the above issues is thrilling in its thoroughness and sophistication. Nice job.

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esto le resultó útil a 36 personas

what just happened

Revisado: 06-13-11

This is one of the few audiobooks that had me laughing out loud again and again, yet if I had to explain the story as a narrative and the ultimate meaning of it, I would feel like I was wrong in some way. The relentlessly articulate language is refreshing and enjoyable much of the time but it took some time for me to figure out the essence of the story. The characters are in some ways extremely sad but often hilarious, and again, relentlessly articulate. The book seems saturated with social commentary, some of which is hilarious and some of which is somewhat biting and perhaps melancholy. The setting seems to be a parallel present day in an Ohio of an alternate universe. I highly reccomend this.

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esto le resultó útil a 18 personas